Recently, we asked the Princeton University Library Digital Studios to photograph the remaining Volumes 9-11, for addition to the PUDL and the Finding Aids.

We were lucky enough to visit the Digital Studios and see the digitization of the volumes in action. Digital Studio staff members use a number of digital cameras and lighting to achieve the best quality image.

Images are fed to a local computer and continually checked by staff as they shoot.

The entire process can take a few months to complete, from photograph to online availability.

We are happy to be able to share the process with you and look forward to announcing the final early volumes being available online soon.

As a digital archivist on Mudd’s Technical Services team, I spend a fair amount of my time looking at screens like the one pictured here.

21st century mold

I briefly panicked when I came across this screen while processing a restricted University Archives collection last year. The information was the output of the software ClamTK, the default virus scanner for our customized Ubuntu Linux digital archives workstation that I wrote about previously. How, in a collection of nearly 7,000 files that are spread across more than 800 subfolders, was I supposed to identify, assess, and possibly remove 34 individual viruses? The theatrics of the term “threats” was, fortunately, more dramatic than the actual threats themselves: embedded links in several PDF documents that the software flagged as PUA’s, or potentially unwanted applications. I reviewed the specifics of each file, and afterwards packaged the bundle of documents for our secure storage location.

I joked with a few of my colleagues that handling digital archives might require archivists to become epidemiologists on the spot. The fortunate aspect of the above scenario was that it happened in our processing room, which means that I was able to thoroughly research the issue, weigh the considerations, and then make a decision. I could have only wished for such calm and contained circumstances two weeks ago when I went to acquire 50 gigabytes of historical materials from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Though the collection spans his lifetime, the John Foster Dulles Papers focus on Dulles’s service as the fifty-third Secretary of State under the Eisenhower administration. Dulles was formally appointed to the position on January 21, 1953. In December of that year, he made his first Christmas address to the American people, wishing them “peace on earth, good will to men.”

John Foster Dulles Papers (MC016), Box 321

Check the blog for future posts about the progress of the John Foster Dulles digitization project. For more information about the Digitizing the Origins of the Cold War project, see some of our previous posts.

With the American premiere of The Imitation Game this Friday, many will be interested in its subject, Alan Mathison Turing, who received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1938. With the “Turing Machine,” he laid the theoretical foundations that make it possible for the device you are using to read this blog post to exist.

Turing’s Graduate School file is now available online, and mostly contains correspondence and paperwork related to his admission to and progress through Princeton’s Ph.D. program in mathematics in the 1930s. Turing studied under Alonzo Church, who made Princeton a leading center for research in mathematical logic, and developed “Church’s Theorem.” For those interested in Church and the history of the mathematics department in the 1930s, there is this oral history collection, which features online transcripts. Researchers interested in Turing may also want to view Church’s correspondence with him, available in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room in Firestone Library.

December 5, 2014 update: We have received questions regarding the death date listed on the file. Although archival records may sometimes contain errors, we do not make changes to the original documents. However, we note that Turing’s actual date of death was June 7, 1954, not June 8, 1954 as listed in Turing’s Graduate School file.

It can often be a daunting task to find University-related publications from the nineteenth century. Fortunately, a number are available in Princeton’s collections and online. You can search for these publications directly through the main library catalog or by using the finding aids site to search across the university’s special collections. You can limit your results by entering keywords such as “The College of New Jersey” and using date ranges.

Athletics
The university has a rich athletic tradition and the documentation of this history can be found in several collections at Mudd. The Athletic Programs Collection contains a number of programs from Princeton’s early athletic history including the famous Princeton-Yale football games near the turn of the century. The C. Bernard Shea Collection on Princeton University Athletics contains clippings and statistics of sports events starting in 1869. In addition to this collection, the Bric-a-Brac yearbooks available in Mudd’s reading room also provide insight into sports events.

Student Speeches
Clippings and programs of the student orations related to Princeton’s commencement ceremonies can be found in the University Commencement Records and some in the College of New Jersey Pamphlets book, which has a selection of materials from the 1800s. These records provide information about the university’s traditions and practices and are a good way to learn more about the university involvement of a particular individual.

University Registries and Catalogs
A number of registries, yearbooks and catalog publications are available in our reference room. The Nassau Herald yearbook, which was first issued in 1864, contains biographical and academic information including names, field of study and place of residence. In addition to directory information it also provides information about the graduating class (photographs are also included after 1915). The Bric a Brac, an informal yearbook publication produced by the Junior class, documents the social aspects of the university including activities of various clubs and sports teams. Class reunion books include an up to date class directory, eulogies, quotes and other pieces of writing that allow insight into the post-graduation activities of alumni.

University catalogs dating from the early 1800s contain information about statistics, fees, coursework and other policies. Some of these catalogs can be accessed in our reading and reference rooms but some can also be found online (see below). There are a number of specialized catalogs like that of the Whig Society that record club activities and alumni.

Digital Resources
In addition to the abundance of information available at Mudd, there are several of online resources that are worth mentioning. If you are a student or faculty member at Princeton you have access to digital versions of some of these publications through the databases available through the main library catalog. The Nassau Monthly, for example can be accessed through ProQuest and EBSCO databases. In addition to these, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Gale News Vault and the Newspaper Archive contain a number of other 19th century publications. If you cannot access Princeton’s digital resources, there are a number of other online resources. The entire archive of the student newspaper The Daily Princetonian, is freely available online and covers events, student issues and local news. The archive contains newspaper clippings that date to as early as 1875. Users can conduct keyword searches as well as limit results using various parameters.

Google Books contains a number of publications that have been digitized by Princeton and other universities. Some examples include catalogs such as the Princeton College Bulletin from 1895 and class reunion books such as the Decennial record of the class of 1874. You can also conduct general searches online to determine if the material you need has been digitized. Here are some examples of available items: an essay written for the student publication, The Tattler; an 1897 essay in Scribner’s magazine written about undergraduate life at Princeton; and a speech given by Charles Fenton Mercer at the University Chapel in 1826.

The Internet Archive has also made available several early images of Princeton’s history through the photo sharing site, Flickr. These images derive from publications and the link to the entire publication is available at the Open Library.

Whether it is using our collections at the Mudd Library or conducting research online, finding information from the 19th century need not be a difficult task. You can visit our website to find more helpful tips on using our collections or contact us via email.

James V. Forrestal ‘15, known to members of the Princeton community as the namesake of the James Forrestal Campus, served as Secretary of the Navy and as the first Secretary of Defense. The Mudd Library is the home of the James V. Forrestal Papers, and Mudd recently digitized Forrestal’s diaries dating from 1941-1949. The diaries document Forrestal’s tenure with the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense. Some notable entries include Forrestal’s notes from the federal investigation of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack and his reflections on the role of the soon-to-be formed National Security Council the day before the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. His diaries also include the letter he wrote to Harry S. Truman resigning as Secretary of Defense in March 1949. These and other diary entries, along with over 50 boxes of Forrestal’s alphabetical correspondence, are now available to researchers online by clicking on the folder titles listed in the finding aid.

The Mudd Library is now embarking on the second stage of the project, in which we plan to complete the digitization in-house. During this phase, we will scan over 146,000 pages from the John Foster Dulles Papers. This collection is a particularly good candidate for digitization, not only because of its importance to the study of the Cold War, but also because the collection exists in a variety of formats that will make it possible for us to experiment with different scanning techniques. Some papers will be digitized with an overhead scanner, while parts of a duplicate correspondence run will be scanned through a sheet-fed, networked photocopier. Parts of the collection were previously microfilmed, so we will also use a microfilm scanner.

By the project’s end, we will have collected enough data to generate useful statistics on the rates of production and costs of the different methods of digitization we employed. These statistics will help us determine how to direct our digitization efforts going forward and will be shared with the wider archival community in the hopes that other archives can benefit from our experience.

Future blog posts will continue to detail the project’s progress. For more information about the Digitizing the Origins of the Cold War project, see some of our previous posts.

Like this:

The Council of State Archivists (CoSA) has designated today as Electronic Records Day and we’d like to use this occasion to provide updates about our efforts to preserve and provide access to born-digital archival records within the University Archives. I wrote about born-digital records in a previous blog post, but as a reminder, challenges unique to born-digital records include bit rot, technological obsolescence, and file authenticity.

Because the last challenge, authenticity, is such a vital piece of the archival puzzle, the Princeton University Archives recently revised its instructions for donors who transfer or donate archival materials containing digital records. You can find those procedures freely available on our website, so rather than repeat them here, it’s more useful to explain why we made the change. Our new policies better reflect a core property that helps archivists demonstrate the authenticity of digital records: fixity.

Archivists understand fixity to be verifiable evidence that a digital file has remained the same over time or across a series of events. Any number of things could impact a file’s fixity, from the purely mundane to the absolute sinister; a person opens a file to delete a punctuation mark or a virus attacks a server to corrupt every sixth block of data on a disk. To generate fixity information at the University Archives, we rely on cryptographic hash values, known in other circles as checksums. Computer programs produce these unique alphanumeric characters by using a variety of hash algorithms, with Message Digest (specifically MD5) and Secure Hash Algorithm (specifically SHA-1 and SHA-256) being the most widely used in archives and libraries.

Examples of MD5 cryptographic hash values

With these cryptographic hash values created for each file, Mudd archivists are able to compile a manifest—yes, similar to a ship’s or flight manifest—and later verify if all the files that made it on board the ship (or disk or server or flash drive) are the same as those currently aboard; no additions, no subtractions, and no alterations.

After a transfer is complete, we can quickly verify fixity on each file using our newly installed Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED). Running a highly customized Ubuntu Linux operating system tailored to meet the needs of archivists and librarians handling born-digital records, this machine is capable of verifying checksums as well as reading most contemporary varieties of solid-state, magnetic, and optical media. I’ll share more about FRED in a future post.

Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED)

While it’s no secret that cryptographic hash algorithms occasionally “collide”—which is to say, a program might assign the same hash value to more than one file—and that well-known attacks have occurred on different algorithms, such instances are extremely rare and an archival repository can safeguard against collision by using more than one algorithm, which Mudd most certainly does. Nonetheless, the focus on fixity is one of many ways the University Archives is working to secure tomorrow’s digital history today, by providing future users with authentic digital records. Happy Electronic Records Day!

The University Archives has launched an online archive of senior theses, and now there are new ways to search for, find, and view Princeton University senior theses.

Senior theses created between 1924 and 2012:

Theses created between 1924 and 2012 are in paper format or on microfiche, and can only be viewed in the Mudd Manuscript Library Reading Room.

To find and request a thesis from 1924 to 2012:

Go to Books+ and enter the author’s name, title (or portion of the title)

When search results appear, choose “Senior Thesis” under resource type (on the left side of the screen), which will limit your results only to senior theses

Choose the thesis record by clicking on the title

Go to the “Locations and Availability” tab, then click the blue button that says “Reading Room Request”

You will be prompted to log in with your netid (PU students, faculty and staff) or to create an account as a non-Princeton University Patron

Come to the Mudd Library to view the thesis during our hours of operation and let us know that you have a request in the system

Senior theses created in 2013:

All senior theses created in 2013 are in PDF format, but they are only viewable in full text at the computers in the reference room of the Mudd Library (i.e. “Walk-in Access”). You do not need to request 2013 theses prior to visiting the library. To see the listing for 2013 theses, visit the Senior Thesis Community page. Further DataSpace search tips follow.

Senior theses created in 2014 and in the future:

All 2014 and later senior theses are in PDF format, and most are accessible on any computer connected to the Princeton University network. A small number of theses are subject to temporary restrictions (embargo) or are restricted to computers in the reference room of the Mudd Library (i.e. “Walk-in Access”).

Use the search box to enter the author’s name, the title, or keywords.

You can limit the search to a specific department by using the dropdown box labeled “In”.

To find a thesis written by a specific author:

Use the Browse button “Author” to see an alphabetical list of authors in the system.

Then click on a name to see an author’s thesis.

To find theses advised by a specific advisor:

The Browse button “Author” lists thesis authors as well asadvisors in a combined listing. To find the name of an advisor, click on the Author button and scroll to the advisor’s name in the alphabetical listing, then click on the name to see the theses advised by this person. Please note, there may be multiple forms of name for each advisor, so check under each of the name entries for that individual (e.g. “Anthony Grafton,” “Anthony T. Grafton,” “Anthony Thomas Grafton”) to find all of the theses that this person advised.

We are pleased to announce the availability of a large digital collection of pamphlets documenting World War I in Europe. These pamphlets were collected by the Princeton University Library starting from the outbreak of the war, as part of a larger European War Collection, and later renamed the Western European Theater Political Pamphlet Collection. They cover a broad range of topics including the economy, the press, the military, arms, territorial disputes, and others. The collection also includes speeches, sermons, bulletins, calendars, and songbooks. It is a multi-lingual collection with material in English, German, French, Italian, Russian, and other languages and reflects the views of people on all sides of the war.

The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death on Friday, November 22, has brought renewed attention to the Warren Commission and its conclusions on the assassination. Then-retired CIA Director Allen Dulles served on the commission and the Mudd Manuscript

The Warren Commission material includes correspondence, memoranda, reports, preliminary drafts of the final Commission report, clippings, articles and interviews relating to Dulles’ service on the Warren Commission. The correspondence includes incoming and outgoing notes and letters, articles and clippings. Correspondents range from members of the Commission to citizens offering their own analysis of the assassination.

The administrative material documents the official activities of the Commission. Included are minutes, agendas, financial information and memoranda, which demonstrate how the Commission was organized and its guidelines for procedures. Also included are intra-Commission memoranda as well as memoranda with other governmental organizations, including the F.B.I. and Secret Service. The findings of these two agencies, plus the Dallas police, were submitted to the Commission, and much of this material documents the life of Lee Harvey Oswald.

First page of Psychiatric Report on L.H. Oswald, 1964: http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC019/c01581